Living in Potrero Hill, San Francisco

Vermont Street's switchback block between 20th and 22nd Streets bends through seven hairpin turns on its way down the hill, a steeper, less landscaped run than Lombard Street's famous curves and, by some measures, an even crookeder stretch of pavement. Eighteenth Street carries Potrero Hill's small commercial strip along the crest, its restaurants and shops facing east toward views of the bay and the Oakland hills that draw residents to the neighborhood's outdoor stairways and pocket parks. The hill's southern slope was long home to Anchor Brewing, the country's oldest craft brewery, which ran a taproom and tours out of its De Haro Street plant for more than four decades before Sapporo shut the brewery down in 2023; a new owner bought the site and brand in 2024, though no taproom had reopened there as of this writing. Victorian houses and newer condos share the surrounding blocks, most built on a grade steep enough to keep the neighborhood's views largely unobstructed.

No BART or Muni Metro line runs through Potrero Hill, and residents rely on buses along 18th or Third Streets, or a walk down to the Mission or Dogpatch, for a rail connection.

The neighborhood's industrial bones stay visible in nearly every building along the crest, even as the businesses inside them keep changing, on a sunny, close-in hill whose safety numbers land comfortably above the city's middle tier.